


she sells seashells

by Snickfic



Category: The Lighthouse (2019)
Genre: Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Narrative of Dubious Linearity, Other, Oviposition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-02-23 12:30:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23711551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: Ephraim Winslow doesn’t wake up pregnant.
Relationships: Ephraim Winslow/Mermaid, Ephraim Winslow/Tentacles
Comments: 10
Kudos: 73
Collections: Unusual_Bearings_2020





	she sells seashells

**Author's Note:**

  * For [libraralien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraralien/gifts).



Ephraim doesn’t wake up pregnant. He wakes up aching and sore from sleeping on the stony beach and wet from the spray. He’s not drowned nor dead by any other means, and when he dares to look, his belly’s no fuller or flatter than when he woke up this morning. (Yesterday morning?)

(Tomorrow?)

He trudges along the beach, up the cliffs, through the course salt-sea grasses that bite at his trouser legs and nip at fingers that get too close. He finds Wake eating—the noonday meal? It must be, for the sun’s overhead. Wake looks him up and down with that disdain that itches like sand under Ephraim’s clothes. “Damn fool idiot,” Wake says, “sleeping out there. You’ll catch your death.” His mouth is half-full; Ephraim can see the partially-masticated meat.

But Ephraim didn’t. He’s still alive, and he didn’t catch anything. (His belly’s flat under his hand.)

* * *

It’s better down by the shore, Ephraim decides. Quieter. 

Not quieter; that’s obviously nonsense. By the shore, the roar in his ears is never-ending. Still, there’s a peace in that fury that’s almost like silence. No other sounds can touch him here: not damned Wake nor the twice-damned gulls. He sits on a great dark stone that time has weathered little pools out of, soaking his trousers in the spray, and his socks, and his shirt. It surrounds him, does that sea-salt roar, a clammy unyielding embrace.

It’s funny; sometimes the noise resolves into things that seem to have meaning, like a song sung on the wind. It’s like seeing patterns in the sand of the shore, a mirage, the mind playing tricks, but still he hears it. If he closes his eyes, he can almost make out the words.

* * *

“You crazy fucking bastard!” Ephraim cries. His cheek aches where Wake’s struck it. Worse, his pride is mightily inflamed. “What the hell did you do that for?”

Wake smacks Ephraim’s other cheek, open-palmed. “You keep a civil tongue, boy. And leave off that infernal tuneless humming. I won’t have that heathen-song in my house.”

“It ain’t your house, any more’n it’s mine,” Ephraim says. Then, “And I wasn’t humming anything.”

“Ah,” Wake says softly, all the violence leaking out of him all at once. He looks so old, suddenly, his face is as weathered as the cliffs. “A damn idiot,” he says, and turns away.

* * *

Ephraim’s not pregnant. That’d be a miracle, wouldn’t it? Or the devil’s curse, one of the two. But he isn’t, obviously. He knows because he only sicks up after a night of drinking (many nights? He can only tell the hour by the swing of the lighthouse beam, and sometimes he thinks it lies). He doesn’t feel any of that wriggling inside that he supposes pregnant women must feel. He’s had no man’s prick up any hole of his, which seems like it must be a prerequisite. 

He knows because every time he palms his belly, it’s flat. Almost empty, like.

* * *

Ephraim wakes in his bed listening to the song. He was dreaming it, that voice that rose and rose and rose, that longing that stirred his prick and pierced his chest. He’s lying in his bed now, though, lumps and all, and the slope-roofed little room is seething with the strength of one of Wake’s farts. That’s what woke Ephraim, surely. 

The song of his dream remains. He blinks at the ceiling, waiting for it to fade. Instead it curls inside him like smoke. It fills him with longing so sweet his face turns wet with salt, like the sea.

He finds himself at the shore. He must have walked here. Yes, his legs are scraped up from the razor-edged sea grass. That song’s all around him now in the crash of the waves and the wind blowing clouds scudding across the moon. It’s in his gut. Ephraim stands on the edge of the rock, toes inches from the sea, and looks for the singer.

A white hand slaps up over the edge of the flat-topped rock. Ephraim nearly topples backwards. While he’s watching, dumb with shock, another hand reaches up from the sea to join the first.

It’s her, of course. She stares up at him with eyes that shine in the moonlight and a wide-open smile glinting with teeth. She screeches impatiently—not so different from Wake, except for how she’s nothing like him—and Ephraim remembers himself and offers her his hands. It’s heavy work, dragging her up from the sea, flopping her over the edge of the rock like a fish he’s caught on a line. When he’s done it, though, there she is, lying flat on the stone, grinning up at him. There are the milk-white breasts he touched that once and then dreamed of touching a dozen times more. There are her scales, glistening wet. And there in the meat of her tail—that must be her sex, there in the center of those fleshy folds, ruffled like curtains.

He fumbles his cock out of his trousers. He’s got it in his hand now, hot, heavy with need. The fish-woman beckons him: closer, closer, until he straddles her tail, a knee on either side. He shuffles forward, pushing his prick ever nearer. 

Finally, he’s there. He has arrived. He shoves in.

She shrieks in ecstasy and tugs him closer yet. She pulls him in, and he buries himself in her. She is cold to the touch but gloriously hot within, like the firebox he shovels coal into. She enfolds him like a warm bath. She stokes him like he’s the firebox. She brushes over his spine with sharp-tipped fingers, and her touch shivers over his bare arse, for his trousers have shrugged down his thighs. He’s lost in her, his woman of the sea.

That touch slips between his haunches. It occurs to Ephraim that his sea-woman is still stroking his back with both hands. He gasps and tries to push up onto his palms, but the sea-woman is damnably strong, and he can’t break her grip on his shoulders. She squeaks at him—almost a soft sound compared to her ecstatic shrieks. It sounds a little like his name. 

She releases him to tangle her fingers in his hair, still squeaking, as whatever it is prodding at his arse pokes inside. The sea-woman undulates underneath him, bringing her fishy hips up to meet his, reminding him of that heat he was fucking into before. _Pay attention,_ she admonishes, her meaning as clear as words. Just as Ephraim tries to turn his attention back to her, her sex and her heat and the fishy seashore perfume of her hair—just then, he is breached. 

The thing prying him open is cold, and it wriggles with purpose, a living thing. He is being fucked, there is no question, and now the sea-woman’s gripping his shoulders so that he can’t turn around to see what on this forsaken island there is _to_ fuck him. She hisses to him softly, stroking his spine. She smiles up at him, sweetly pleased, practically angelic. She undulates up against him again; again insisting that he pay attention.

The thing in his arse does something, he doesn’t know what, only that it squirms, and suddenly Ephraim is molten like iron in the forge. He is sparking like the wheels of the engine against the steel narrow-gauge track, hauling its timber load. He gasps. The sea-woman’s smile widens, shining and full of teeth, and still that strange foreign member twists in him and floods him with heat again and again and again.

He’s spilled, he realizes. He didn’t even notice. He’s collapsed on his sea-woman, trembling, and she’s combing her fingers through his hair. He realizes, too, that it must be her fucking him—who else but her? Who else is there on this island but her and Wake, and Ephraim’s damned sure it isn’t Wake—and that she isn’t finished yet. Something else is happening; he can tell by the writhing. Ephraim lies on her, sated, and lets it.

It comes to him slowly that he is being filled. He doesn’t think that unnamed thing is pushing any deeper, but there is pressure slowly building in him all the same: a heaviness in his gut, an occasional pinch deep within.

The sea-woman is singing softly. The song he woke to pierced him with its longing; this one is sweet, gentle like the sea-woman’s hands on his neck are gentle. In it he can hear the swaying of kelp rooted to the sea floor, the wash of the salt breeze through those sharp-edged grasses. He soaks in it.

There comes a time when Ephraim’s no longer comfortable lying on his belly. This time the sea-woman makes no objection when he rolls off her and onto his back. He looks up into the night and its half-clouded heavens. His breath is heavy and slow. He could peer between his legs and discover what’s fucking him, but he doesn’t. The sea-woman pushes up onto her side, shrieking in quiet satisfaction. She lays her hand on him—on his gut, which feels strange. There is too much of it, he thinks. He could touch it himself and be certain, but he doesn’t do that, either. He lies still and lets himself be filled.

He falls asleep to the sound of the sea-woman’s lullaby.

* * *

Ephraim doesn’t wake up pregnant. He wakes up empty, alone. He wakes up aching and sore from sleeping on the stony beach and wet from the spray. He’s not drowned nor dead by any other means, and when he dares to look, his belly’s no fuller than before.

He looks to the empty sea and the sky cluttered with thrice-damned gulls, and he begins to trudge up the beach.

[end]


End file.
